A year after the release of V/H/S/94, I’m still haunted by it. I still think of Bill, the sewer-dwelling Raatma worshiper with black liquid spilling past his chapped lips as he gawks at overly-ambitious reporter Holly. I still think of Andrew Edwards, the half-headed zombie that terrorizes a young worker during a blackout at a funeral home. But above all, I think of Timo Tjahjanto’s “The Subject,” of the blood-soaked room oozing with failed, short-circuiting cyborgs, and Shania Sree Maharani and Bodi Ross’ frightening performances as the subject and the insane surgeon, respectively. 94 was a disturbing bloodbath bursting with terror—an impressive installment and revitalization of the found footage franchise. Bloody Disgusting and Shudder’s latest offering, V/H/S/99, challenges its predecessor with its fearlessness, wit, and a damn good closing story.
As with the ever-nostalgic culture of the 1990s, 99 forgoes its traditional frame story. Instead, the audience is given a mixtape of terror, with brief, unnerving stop-motion animations of toy soldiers in between stories. The cutting of the frame story is no loss, but rather a massive gain; Shudder’s decision to trim the fat here notably makes 99 feel more organic. It feels real—as if you picked up an old tape in the basement that had a bunch of random episodes, commercials, or partial movies on it.
Maggie Levin’s “Shredding” unfolds as the film’s first segment. The sun-kissed lens introduces us to the insufferable CKY wannabes RACK (friends Rachel, Ankur, Chris, and Kaleb). They’re a punk band with no respect for authority, each other, the world around them, or the dead—a theme that it’s cleverly interwoven through 99. The kids are loud, obnoxious, and blatantly cruel, and, for some reason, think it’s a good idea to break into and record a music video at The Colony Underground.
The venue, now dilapidated and abandoned, once served as a haven for underground punks and rockers. After a fire broke out years before and members of the all-girl band Bitch Cat were trampled to death in the chaos, the club closed for good. Rachel pressures the fearful and slightly-more-responsible Ankur, who warns his friends of disrespecting the dead and their resting place. Rachel and the rest of the crew continue to laugh about the girls’ tragic deaths and pull pranks on Ankur. While Levin was really going for the fright, the gags on Ankur are overused in this segment to borderline annoyance, where you’re saying, “Okay, I get it. They’re terrible friends.”
Only when Caleb gets yanked into the rafters and thrown back down in a splatter of gore do things pick up—and when it picks up, it picks up (no pun intended). If there was a video to be placed in the dictionary beside the definition of the phrase “fuck around and find out,” this would be it. The segment ends à la Tito and Tarantula in From Dusk Till Dawn—with a tiny bit more dismemberment.
Honestly, you go Bitch Cat. After watching RACK jump and crush sex dolls filled with red jello, I was cheering you on to get those little Jackass-wannabe punks.
In a haze of static, we become the audience of a video confessional in Johannes Roberts’ “Suicide Bid.” Lily, a doe-eyed, naïve college freshman (played with poignancy by Alexia Ioannides) is anxious to join the campus’ most prestigious and cruel sorority. The disingenuous crew leads Lily to a dark mausoleum. In the haze of flickering candlelight, they tell her about the urban legend of Giltine, a young woman who, like Lily, wanted to join their sorority but died mid-rush when a hazing ritual went horribly wrong years ago. This hazing ritual, they reveal, is the same one Lily must do—spend the entire night in a coffin six feet under in the adjoining cemetery. Giltine, they warn, will drag her to hell if she gets too scared. Only after she completes this task will she be able to join their “sisterhood”. Having known the same kind of bullying, mocking girls in middle and high school, all I could shout at the screen was, “Run, Lily! You’re too good for them!” Their behavior, and lack of respect for Lily and the dead, gets under the skin, and stays there.
Lily’s descent into the creaky old wooden coffin is, without a doubt, some of the scariest horror I’ve seen in years. Ioannides shallow breathing and tearful pleading to be let out burn right through you.
You can tell that Roberts was having fun here—and he’s excellent at it. He plays with claustrophobia, arachnophobia, and aquaphobia in “Suicide Bid,” and uses some striking imagery to do so, notably in spindly spiders crawling across Ioannides’ dirt-streaked face and rain-slick mud spilling onto her coffin as a thunderstorm rages. “Suicide Bid” is perhaps the strongest segment in 99, strictly horror-wise (“To Hell And Back” has some humor to it, so let’s rank that separately), and its terrifying reveal of Giltine is remarkable for the franchise.
We’re thrown into Flying Lotus’ “Ozzy’s Dungeon,” a violent Legends of the Hidden Temple knockoff that will send chills down your spine. Something I loved about this segment was the reality check that all the ’90s competitive kid shows I loved as a kid—Slime Time Live, Legends of the Hidden Temple, and Nickelodeon’s Guts—were, well, kind of fucked up. Any number of accidents could have happened while these kids competed in rigorous mazes and courses, and that’s what Flying Lotus forces us to face in this segment.
Detroit native Donna is a young, bright-eyed contestant on the game show, supported by her loving parents who sit in the stands. Host Ozzy (an unrecognizable Walking Dead alum Steven Ogg) is a saccharine-talking creep who grants wishes backstage if a child wins the show. Ozzy mockingly dismisses Donna’s enthusiasm and hope, clearly favoring another contestant who is Caucasian, male, and from Los Angeles. When Donna goes head-to-head in the final gauntlet with the aforementioned contestant, she’s brutally maimed trying to escape through the final tunnel to the finish line.
A few years later, Donna is wheelchair-bound with a rotting leg (“Why hasn’t a doctor looked at that? Why hasn’t it been amputated?” were my thoughts at the nauseating FX makeup). Her mother—played with gripping intensity and terror by Sonya Eddy—has abducted Ozzy. The family keeps him locked in a rusty dog crate in their basement and tortures him, threatening to douse him in acid for what he did to the now-downtrodden Donna. Ozzy, crying, bleeding, and stripped of his clothes, is forced to go through his own “Ozzy’s Dungeon”—a haphazard obstacle course gushing with feces and broken glass.
The sequence is the most disturbing part of 99, akin to the unease felt while watching 94‘s “The Subject.” Only this time, “Ozzy’s Dungeon” feels like you’re watching an actual snuff film; it’s a brutally uncomfortable watch. Flying Lotus did not hold back here, and while I do think the beginning of the segment outshined the final act, all I can say is, bravo.
“The Gawkers,” Tyler MacIntyre’s offering to the franchise, is the weakest segment in 99, but it does have its moments. A suburban crew of teenage boys—bratty, creepy, and misogynistic—become obsessed with Sandra, the young woman that has moved in across the cul-de-sac. The boys pressure one of their brothers to install spyware on her computer, and once it’s done, they crowd around their computer to watch her. “I love technology, man!” One of them jeers.
Sure you do, buddy. You’re not gonna like it in a second.
Thinking they will catch Sandra undress, the boys are horrified to see her body contort unnaturally with her bones cracking.
MacIntyre’s segment, while not the strongest of the batch, does offer some great feminist revenge, clever hints (“What’s up with all of the statue heads?” one of the boys asks about the decor around Sandra’s pool), and a critical commentary on technology and the misogynistic “rom-coms” of the 1990s and early 2000s like The Girl Next Door. Seriously, how did we as a society ever think that leering at a woman through a window was “romantic?” Thank you for the reality check, MacIntyre.
Power couple Vanessa and Joseph Winter close out 99 with a bang in “To Hell And Back,” a humor-infused nightmare featuring best friends and videographers Nate and Troy. On the eve of Y2K, and donning paper “Happy New Year!” crowns (an amazing little touch here), the duo film satanic cultists as they attempt to summon a demon.
The ritual goes awry when the videographers are accidentally sent to Hell. Dressed in sweaters and still clad in their NYE celebratory hats, the boys amble through the stormy hellscape with desperation to get back home—which they only have mere minutes to do before the portal is closed and they’re stuck in the underworld forever. They’re aided by Mabel (Melanie Stone), a tortured, Hell-bound young woman with a crooked, yellow grin, cropped, messy hair, patches of decaying flesh, and some killer humor.
“To Hell And Back” is one of my favorite V/H/S segments to date. Nate, in his innocent-looking sweater and crown, rushing to catch up with Mabel with a gore-soaked staff in his hand all while bickering with cameraman Troy, is just too good. In fact, it’s gold. The terror to break up these moments of humor—from a massive bear trap to a deformed human-eating baby-woman monster hybrid jumping out of the caverns of Hell—sells “To Hell And Back.” Stone’s Mabel is the star of this segment with her raspy, gremliny voice and wholesome wickedness (is that a thing?), and I can’t wait to see more of her.
In the short time that the three of them are together, Troy, Nate, and Mabel become a charming tag team with brilliant chemistry. You’re rooting for them—even Mabel. The ending is a killer close to 99, and, while terrifying, it’s also pretty damn poignant.
99 is a creepy and well-written watch to add to your Letterboxd lists this Halloween.
It’s an insane ride—to hell and back.
V/H/S/99
2022
dir. Johannes Roberts, Vanessa and Joseph Winter, Maggie Levin, Tyler MacIntyre, and Flying Lotus
99 minutes
V/H/S/99 is now streaming on Shudder and AMC+.
